In Real Life (22 page)

‘Can I use your car while you're gone?' I say.

This is a joke.

I've never learned to drive.

‘Don't you dare,' she says, smiling.

I wheel her suitcase over to Martin's Audi and he pops the boot from inside and I lift it in.

‘I've left your present in the kitchen,' she says.

‘I'll give you yours when you get back,' I say. ‘It's still, um, on order.'

‘Please don't accidentally burn everything down while I'm away.'

We hug again, and then she gets into the car and I turn and walk back towards the front door. Behind me I hear the squeal of Martin's tyres as he races out of the drive.

There's a parcel and a card on the table by the kitchen window.

I open the card first.
Ian, Happy Birthday!
it reads. She's taped a tenner inside, with a big curly arrow pointing at it and the message,
Have a drink on me!

I unpeel it and put it in my pocket.

The present is a long, green Marks & Spencer's scarf.

I've never once in my life mentioned anything to Carol about needing a scarf and I look at it for a long time, wondering what could possibly have made her choose it, what exactly it was about a long green Marks & Spencer's scarf that she thought I might like.

I try my very hardest to like it.

But at the same time, I can't help but take it as an indicator of how little we really know each other any more.

On the bus into work I look around at all the other passengers on the lower deck and think: I am now a thirty-one-year-old man sat here on this bus. I smoked a roll-up at the bus stop, before I remembered I was supposed to be quitting. The tobacco was there in my coat pocket and I was still on autopilot. It's okay, I tell myself. Today is a write-off. But you will definitely quit tomorrow. I catch a quick glimpse of my face reflected in the window of the bus and wonder if it
looks however a thirty-one-year-old man's face is supposed to look.

I fiddle with the end of my green scarf and look out of the window and hope that Carol is having a nice weekend away with Martin.

Just before my stop, my phone beeps.

I open the message, hoping it might somehow be from Dalisay even though she doesn't have my number.

It's from Mum:

Happy birthday love hop you ar having a lovely day love nun
, it says.

While Martin's away, Dean stands in as manager. He's wearing an old grey suit instead of his usual jeans and jumper, and he stoops in the doorway and claps his hands in a pale imitation of Martin and tells us all to get cracking and that he'll be back in a bit to check up on us.

Dalisay's terminal remains empty. I keep my eye fixed on the doorway all morning, willing her to walk through it, before finally remembering that she said she was helping her aunt.

There's a tangible lack of enthusiasm in the room.

It's still somehow a week till payday.

We're all at our lowest ebb.

I log into Facebook but she's still not accepted my friend request.

I click in the search bar, type ‘Lauren Cross,' and hit return, knowing there'll be nothing there, there never is, but checking anyway.

I scroll through the results and, as usual, none of them are her.

The dialler chirps.

The phone rings in my ear.

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

PAUL

2014

P
aul sits in the doctor's waiting room, attempting to read a list of the
Fifteen Guaranteed Ways to Give Your Girl a Screaming Orgasm
but he can't really concentrate. He keeps reading number six (‘The Bowling Ball Technique') over and over, his stomach churning and fluttering.

‘Mr Saunders?' the receptionist says eventually.

‘That's me,' Paul says, raising a trembling hand.

‘Doctor O'Brien will see you now. Room three.'

Paul stands. He puts
GQ
back on the coffee table. He leaves the waiting room.

This is it, he thinks, as he walks along the corridor. This is the moment my life changes forever. It will just be doctors and hospitals from this moment onwards.
Everything will smell of disinfectant. I will never go to Australia or give my girl a screaming orgasm or publish another novel ever again.

He pushes open the door to room three and the doctor, a doughy, grey-haired man in his late forties, smiles at him warmly.

‘Paul,' he says, like they've met before. ‘What can we do for you, then?'

Paul lowers himself shakily into the chair.

He's not eaten anything except a Mars bar in the last forty-eight hours.

‘It's . . . It's . . . Well, I've got this . . . lump . . . on my gum.'

‘Right, okay,' Doctor O'Brien says, nodding, like a lump on the gum is a perfectly normal thing for a thirty-one-year-old male to have. ‘And how long have we had this lump, do you think?'

‘Maybe two months?' Paul says. ‘I'm not too sure.'

‘Right, let's have a look then,' Doctor O'Brien says.

He stands up and comes out from behind his desk. He puts on an eyepiece and a pair of rubber gloves and picks up a little mirror on a stick. ‘Can you show me which gum it's on, please?' he says. ‘Just tip your head back a little further for me, would you?'

So Paul tilts his head and closes his eyes and opens his mouth and points at his inside-right lower gum with a trembly finger.

‘Oh,
yeeesss
,' Doctor O'Brien says quietly, to himself.

Yes? Paul thinks.

Paul feels the doctor's finger go inside his mouth and
press hard on the lump, then prod at the skin surrounding it. He opens his mouth as far as it'll go to accommodate all the doctor's fingers and that little mirror on the stick, which clicks, occasionally, against Paul's back teeth.

‘Right,' the doctor says. ‘You can put your head back up now.'

Paul opens his eyes and lifts his head. Doctor O'Brien is pulling off his gloves and dropping them into a bin. Paul scans his face, trying to work out the verdict.

Doctor O'Brien sits back down.

‘Do you chew gum?' he asks.

‘Sometimes,' Paul says. ‘I mean yeah, I used to chew it quite a lot, yeah.'

‘I thought so,' Doctor O'Brien says. ‘What you have there Paul is a buccal exostosis. In other words a bony outgrowth on the gum. These are most usually caused by excessive chewing, or sometimes from stressful situations, if you grind your teeth in your mouth, perhaps. Essentially it's your mouth's reaction to a sudden increase in stress on the teeth and gums. You've actually got a second one coming, too, on the other side, but it's not quite as developed.'

Paul shifts his tongue over to the other gum and prods it gingerly and sure enough, there's another, smaller lump there, too.

‘Oh,' Paul says. ‘So it's not . . . um . . . it's not . . . you know? Bad?'

‘Not at this stage, no. If they
keep growing
then yes, maybe you'll need some minor surgery, but we're talking about if it suddenly starts making eating a problem for
you. Have they been growing very rapidly, would you say?'

‘No, I don't think so . . .'

Paul's hardly listening now. He's too busy feeling the ice-cold waves of relief flood through him.

You have been given another chance
, a benevolent, godlike voice says inside him.
Do not fuck any more things up. Untangle yourself like a big black ball of tights. Start again, from this point here
.

‘There is something else actually,' Paul says. ‘I'd like to give up smoking.'

LAUREN

2014

‘
I
've taken the liberty of getting you a drink,' Carl said, easing himself awkwardly out of his seat in order to lean across the pub table and kiss me. He smelled of the kind of aftershave my dad sometimes wore, and he was wearing a shiny burgundy shirt, tucked into a pair of dark blue jeans, and his hands touched my waist a little too familiarly as he pecked my cheek. His profile had said thirty-four, but he looked much closer to forty-four. ‘I hope that's okay?' he said, nodding down at the wine glass.

I looked at it, standing there opposite his pint of lager.

Was
it okay?

Was this what people did on blind dates?

‘Thanks,' I said, feeling a cold, prickling embarrassment sweep across my skin.

I sat down and Carl slid himself back behind his side of the table, then leaned across it as if it was a job interview. It was quiet in the pub – why the fuck had we chosen my local? – just a few people perched on stools at the other side of the room, and I was thankful for that at least.

An hour, I told myself. You need to stay here for at least an hour.

‘This is a nice place,' Carl said, looking around. ‘I've not been here before.'

‘Right,' I said, feeling a gloomy hourglass up-end itself inside me.

What was I doing?

Wasn't this my birthday?

Why was I spending it here with Carl?

‘I've just come back, you see,' he continued, ‘from South America.'

He sat back and took a big, proud swig of his pint. His skin was smooth and tanned and slightly oily, and his eyes wouldn't quite meet mine. Instead they flitted from his drink to the jukebox to a woman who was laughing loudly, over by the bar.

Maybe I'm just as much of a disappointment, I thought.

‘Have you ever been travelling?' Carl said.

And just then, as if on cue, ‘Californication' came on the jukebox.

I thought about my year in Canada: about Emily and Michael and you.

‘Not really,' I said, trying to smile, feeling the bones creaking in my face, the grey sand collecting in a heap on the floor of my stomach.

Only fifty-nine more minutes to go . . .

IAN

2014

I
'm woken by the front door slamming, then someone stomping down the hall. The light goes on in the living room. I look up at Carol from my place on the sofa and try to remember what I was doing. The last thing I remember clearly is going to Morrisons and blowing my birthday tenner on an oven pizza and a bottle of White Label rum.

‘What time is it?' I ask.

Carol doesn't answer, just walks over to the sofa, then flops down on it next to me. I look at my laptop. The browser's still open on Dalisay's Facebook wall. I remember what happened now: Dalisay accepted my friend request and it turns out she has a boyfriend. A man with thick muscly arms and spiky black hair called Marcos.

‘What's the matter?' I say.

‘Can I have some of that rum?' Carol says.

Before I can answer, she picks up the bottle and pours a big slug into a mug that still has an inch of cold tea in the bottom, then knocks the rum/tea mixture back in one.

‘You alright?' I say, knowing what a stupid question this is.

Her eyes are red and puffy.

‘I broke up with Martin,' she says.